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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Saturday, November 07, 2015

War on Terror: Boko Haram Front

Nigeria is getting more serious about fighting jihadis. And we are increasing our level of support to the region,

President Buhari, being a retired army officer, ordered a change in the way the military does business as soon as he came to power in March. As a former general he knew how to assess and address the current commanders and has enacted a number of military reforms. This has led to the dismissal of a lot of officers, especially in the army. One general was even jailed for incompetence, misbehavior and losing a major battle to Boko Haram. There are new training programs, which the troops appreciate as a lot of corrupt or incompetent officers did not want to be bothered in the past. ...

President Buhari has quietly reinstated the use of mercenaries. His predecessor had hired some foreign mercenaries in late 2014 to train and advise (lead) a task force of elite Nigerian troops to quickly crush the most determined Boko Haram resistance. While running for election Buhari condemned this move and sent the mercenaries home once he was in power. Buhari condemned the bribes that accompanied the mercenary deal but his own special operations officers reported that the mercenaries had been quite useful.

And this use of STTEP mercenaries is illustrative of their value:

The men STTEP sent consisted of whites and blacks but all were experienced (often former special operations) combat vets. A few were from outside Africa although most were South African (or from neighboring countries like Namibia). In a few weeks the STTEP force had expanded by selecting competent Nigerian troops and these few hundred men, moving quickly in trucks and a few armored vehicles as the 72nd Mobile Force Battalion, with Nigerian aircraft overhead (some with STTEP men aboard acting as spotters) quickly smashed one “troublesome” Boko Haram group after another. Boko Haram had up to ten thousand armed men in the north organized into dozens of smaller units led by charismatic men of varying military skill. The STTEP force went after the most effective Boko Haram battlegroups, which not only greatly weakened Boko Haram overall but demoralized the less competent Boko Haram leaders and gunmen. This made it easier for the troops from neighboring countries to go after the remaining Boko Haram fighters.

Nigeria just needed a core force of good, mobile troops supported by air power to spearhead the advance by the rest of the ground forces. The jihadi enemies aren't supermen. They're fanatics. And even many of them are just fanatical when they are winning. They can be killed by good troops and even adequate troops if the jihadis are put on the run. The war against Boko Haram isn't won, but the jihadis were hurt.

"This training is part of U.S. AFRICOM's core mission to help our partners strengthen their defense capabilities," Prichard said. "The skills gained during these military-to-military exchanges can be used by the participants for a broad range of activities to secure their home countries or contribute to a regional security effort."

The number of troops involved is small but will work with local forces to make them more effective.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.